Ed Speak
Iwrite this on the way back from the MMRT track in Chennai after witnessing the close-fought final race of the MRF Challenge series. As you will read in our race report, Harrison Newey, son of Red Bull F1’s technical director Adrian Newey, clinched a tied championship courtesy more race wins while Mick Schumacher, son of Michael Schumacher, finished third behind the current German F4 champion, Joey Mawson. Having big-name drivers coming back to the championship year after year is validation of the concept and also a clear indication of how popular the series has become among international junior formulae. And despite there being not a single Indian driver on the 14-car grid, this is still an Indian series.
There’s MRF, obviously, not only promoting the series but supplying tyres to the grid. The (carbonfibre) chassis comes from Dallara while this year the power units are from Ford Montune (replacing the Renault Sport units of the past four years) but everything is put together, run and maintained by J A Motorsport in Coimbatore. A continuous effort to make the cars quicker means lap times have dropped by 3-4 seconds this year and J Anand wants to bring it up to Formula 3-pace next year, from the current F4 speeds. Narain Karthikeyan is testing the new aero package for next year as well as a paddle shift gearbox. And Chennai-based MMSC organises the race weekends, even the two rounds in Dubai and Bahrain (which turns out to be cheaper than racing at BIC, go figure).
The series now attracts big names from across the world and everybody pays the 50,000 US dollar entry fee for 14 races that span 4 weekends. No free lunches here. If that sounds a lot (in the Indian context) I must tell you that it is a fifth of what it kitty costs is to`run64 lakh.in the And Germanthe reallyF4 series,smart thing albeit is a thatfull season.the MRF The Challengetotal prizeis timed moneyto coincide with the European winter where most series have a testing ban. The series also runs on some F1 tracks, the BIC for the three years that Formula 1 came to India, Abu Dhabi last year, and this year’s season opener at Bahrain which was also a support race to the World Endurance Championship. This makes it attractive to many GP2 drivers who need seat time at F1 tracks.
If there’s one thing missing it's the spectators. Even though Sachin Tendulkar spent half his Sunday at the races, even though there were car and bike stunt shows, even though the racing was close with a fair number of spectacular accidents, there were only a few hundred spectators. It’s great to have live streaming of the races but let’s not forget the value, the importance even, of a grandstand filled with racing enthusiasts.
The series remains a testament to what a professionally run and well thought out racing series can achieve, even in a country where the standard of racing isn’t much to talk about. And hopefully the day is not far when Indian racers will learn to market themselves, raise the cash, benchmark themselves against some of the best young talent in the world and use the series as a springboard to an internationally successful racing career.